Dead Man Walking

by Zach Adams

  Isaac never participated in the sport if he could avoid it. He found that, whenever he attempted to make small talk, he would inevitably begin to babble at great length about superheroes, time-travelling medical professionals, or any number of other subjects which the listener typically had no interest in at that moment but listened politely anyway.

  The few times Isaac got invited to parties, and the even fewer times he actually attended them, he would stutter through this process until everyone had nodded like he was insane and fled to a more socially competent partygoer. An unfortunate side effect was that he would often replace each escaped conversational victim with another drink and spend the remainder of the evening rambling to himself and whoever would respond until Donny dragged him home. The memories gave Isaac phantom nausea.

  “I hope that guy runs for President…”

  How is that even relevant right now? Panic thought.

  “Moooom, can we go hoooome…”

  Do as the child asks, Rage growled.

  “Anyways my father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate…”

  Oh, please lose the ability to speak, Rage went on, before Isaac snapped at himself internally for being so rude. He continued skimming over exhibits.

  “There were five Northern Athabascan groups – Dena’ina, Koyukon, Tanana, Kuskokwim, and Ahtna - which lived in the area around Denali…”

  Isaac perked up and followed the voice. A few aisles to his right was a class of eight-year-olds, with a half dozen grown-ups guiding them. Their teacher, at the front of the group, struggled to sound enthusiastic as she read through the notes. She was a tall, blonde-haired woman who reminded Isaac of his mother, who had taught history. The children were all crowding around an exhibit about interior Alaska. Isaac kept a distance, realizing it wouldn’t look great on him if he wandered up to a group of children and listened to their field trip.

  “Hunters and trappers along the Yukon river…”

  Interesting but please go away, Isaac thought desperately. A couple of kids got scolded for fidgeting too much, but otherwise no one obeyed his silent request.

  Relatable, to be honest, Isaac thought as he paced through the aisles, pretending to study exhibits while waiting for the field trip to move on.

  Perhaps if you had spent high school studying instead of drinking, you’d have the attention span and discipline necessary to learn something today, Panic quipped. Isaac ignored himself.

  Shouldn’t schools be on their holiday break still? Why are they here anyway? Rage pitched in.

  “Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?” A strange voice croaked behind him. It was the kind of voice that gave away the owner’s age. This person had the whistling rasp that Isaac felt had to belong to a three-hundred-and-forty-two-year-old prospector from the Gold Rush who smoked unfiltered cigarettes since birth. The sound was gravelly, dusty, and painful just to hear. Isaac spun around in shock at the intrusion.

  The man fit the voice perfectly. The relic addressing Isaac was short and bald with a bushy white beard, slightly gray skin, and no front teeth. He wore thick flannel and corduroy pants with brown suspenders and hobbled dangerously on a cane he most likely whittled himself.

  Isaac was unsure what the man was doing in this century, let alone commenting to a total stranger about the history of Alaska. The stranger’s eyes were clouded with cataracts, but he seemed to have no difficulty seeing. When he blinked, Isaac thought he detected a faint flash of red behind the clouds.

  “Uh… In-interesting, yeah, for sure,” Isaac stuttered in response. His voice cracked when he said, “for sure”. The old man giggled, and Isaac was mildly astonished a cloud of dust didn’t spray from his mouth.

  “All these memories,” The man wheezed, ending the statement with a coughing fit into a grungy old handkerchief. Isaac took an uneasy step back while the man had his eyes closed.

  “Wearing a bit thin,” The stranger said once he caught his breath, as if there was a chance Isaac already knew this about him.

  It was at this point Isaac’s voice shut down and the only weapons left in his social arsenal were polite but tense smiles and nods. He did both, hoping the conversation would age out of existence, in much the same way its primary participant hadn’t.

  Isaac saw the cluster of young humans progressing chaotically toward the stairwell. Their exhausted teacher and parents were leading them to the kid-friendly interactive science room downstairs. He began to shuffle inch by inch toward the exhibit they had abandoned. The old man clicked his tongue a few times.

  “Remember me,” The elder said. When Isaac turned to face him again, there was no one in sight.

  Definitely can’t process that right now, Panic said. Isaac agreed, mentally labeling the unpleasant experience “to be dealt with in a safe, well-lit place with no mirrors or other people present at a later date”.

  Isaac looked up and down the display at the collection of tribal artifacts. Protected by a thick sheet of glass was a collection of weapons, tools, clothes, and other belongings left behind by Alaskans of centuries ago. Nothing that hinted about L’æon or a magic Book, though. He quadruple-checked the display, growing more desperate for anything useful to him.

  As his stress grew more evident, strangers zigzagging around him started to give him concerned looks as they passed.

  Isaac finally spotted something. In the bottom right corner of the display was a leather quiver full of ancient arrows, although that wasn’t what caught Isaac’s eye. What drew him in was the pale-yellow sheet of paper sticking partially out from underneath it. He could only see a few lines of text, but he recognized the musical script.

  Of course it’s locked in a display, it’s a museum, you idiot, Rage growled furiously.

  He’s been under a lot of stress lately! Panic wailed in Isaac’s defense.

  Maybe we can get it without anyone seeing, Isaac interrupted himself.

  Isaac ran through a series of scenarios in his mind. After a few minutes he noticed a trend of every possible plan being thwarted by the glass, the guards, or nosey strangers. Frustrated, he wandered around other parts of the museum while he thought.

  Isaac circled around a square walkway above the main area, which had a huge fountain when Isaac was a kid. People used to throw pennies in it every day, so much so that the whole thing glittered.

  Today the fountain was absent, replaced by rows of folding chairs. A group of about twenty people were watching a presentation about the pipeline. He leaned over the railing, not-listening to part of the presentation while he rested.

  A sign on the left side of the room which Isaac had failed to notice on the way in caught his eye. It was a bold red background featuring the likeness of Wonder Woman, poised to jump through the frame, Lasso of Truth in hand. Whatever she was there to tell him about, it was somewhere above his head.

  Isaac perked up again, forgetting all about L’æon, hollow, Denali, anything that somehow seemed important before this discovery.

  After the past couple of days, a break with some actual fiction would be well-deserved, Rage grunted.

  Besides, it’s not like we’re on a time limit, right? Panic asked.

  Isaac practically teleported to the top floor of the museum, which was covered wall-to-wall in comic books and memorabilia. His jaw dropped. He had never seen so many comic books in one spot. There were books locked in plastic cases covering four walls in one area, and a collection available for reading on a small table. They had DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, and dozens of other publishers Isaac didn’t recognize by name.

  Books ranged from the Avengers and Justice League to Mickey Mouse, Judge Dredd, the Terminator, Transformers, Howard the Duck, even Archie. He took the beauty of the display in, looking at every object to be found.

  There was a row of Transformers figures on a glass shelf, all in robot form with a small photo of their transformed state beside them. He spotted Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Fortress Maximus (Good golly that’s a big’un, Isaac noted of t
he Cybertronian which took the form of a mechanical city), Megatron, and Soundwave, but didn’t remember the other dozen or so.

  Isaac rounded a corner past the robots to find a life-sized model of the Stargate, across from Captain Kirk’s chair.

  “So those hollows killed me, and somehow I made it to heaven. Could be worse,” Isaac said to himself as he examined every piece of nerd history on display. He took a right to the far side of the floor and found the crowning jewel; a reading corner modeled to look like a wizard’s laboratory, complete with plastic cauldrons and skulls. He half-hoped a skull’s eyes would light up orange and start spouting dirty jokes.

  A pair of soft maroon armchairs sat in front of an artificial, but convincingly warm, fireplace and a pair of messily stocked bookshelves. Also featured in the wonderful place was a room-spanning rug featuring a map of Middle Earth, and banners of the Houses in Game of Thrones draped on one wall.

  Isaac scanned up and down the bookshelves. Poe, King, Tolkien, and a scattered collection of other classics graced the space. The lack of organization irritated him, but he put it aside, reasoning that it wasn’t nearly as bad as Chloe’s bookshelf at home. Isaac wished he had his cellphone, so he could take pictures to share with his sister later. The whole display nearly brought a tear to his eye. Having momentarily returned to a joyous childlike state and forgotten his reason for entering the museum, he picked out King’s “It” and made it through the first ninety-one pages in joyful silence and solitude.

  Chapter Eleven: The Beast with No Eyes

  ?2018?

  Isaac heard a noise from the lower levels of the museum which he couldn’t quite describe. Reverberation through the smooth halls of the building blurred the sound until a muffled hint reached his ears, just audible enough to startle him out of his comfy chair.

  The noise lasted all of about three seconds before it was drowned out by the easily recognizable sound of a building full of people screaming.

  Isaac placed the book he had been reading on the armchair as he stood up from it and trekked over to the stairwell to see what was happening. He leaned over the railing just enough to get a view.

  There were streams of museum patrons trying to escape the building, and the hallways were clogged with their bodies which obviously weren’t prepared for this sort of activity. Large people trampled small people, leading to an increase in screaming. Children wailed as the parents who managed to get the day off work tried to comfort them. Doorways jammed shut with the physically impossible volume of people trying to cram their way through.

  Glass display cases were demolished, leaving blades of inch-thick glass all over the floor in growing pools of human fluids. The pandemonium nearly shattered Isaac’s ear drums.

  Isaac remembered the hollows vividly. That night, he had been alone, and he froze. It was a miracle, a dream come true even, that L’æon found him before he found himself at the receiving end of an involuntary ultimate makeover. For the moment, he was glued to the railing, kneeling out of sight. He didn’t have time to work out the odds of such a thing happening again.

  Jump through the window! Panic offered in an attempt at assistance.

  Isaac reminded himself that they were at the top of a four-story building and the ground was covered with solid ice for miles, made worse by the previous morning’s rain.

  Grab one of those antique weapons and swing for whatever’s down there, Rage spat.

  His argument was squashed by the fact that Isaac was more likely to take his own head off than help anyone. He crept down the stairs, careful to keep his head below the railing and out of sight.

  What are you doing? Turn around! Panic cried.

  Screw that, go pick a fight! Rage countered.

  With a flood of adrenaline, Isaac propelled himself down the stairs before anybody in his head could talk him out of it. He barely avoided tripping and spiraling his way down to a broken neck.

  Isaac reached the first floor, unable to move without stepping in blood. At least a hundred shredded corpses littered what should have been a safe place. Most of their clothing had been torn to rags.

  From the direction the crowd had been fleeing, the previous noise repeated. With closer proximity, Isaac found it easier to describe – but he wished he hadn’t.

  The noise had a rumbling, leonine roar to it, with an overtone of a serpentine hiss. The combination was not entirely unlike someone going through a psychotic breakdown singing a Gregorian chant while attempting to claw their way out of a room made of chalkboards, Isaac imagined. Whether or not his description made any sense at all, the harsh sound at high volume sent ice though his skin to his bones.

  Isaac looked around at the destroyed room. It took significant effort not to lose the contents of his stomach. Knowing he was likely the least-qualified person in the building, if not the state, to do anything in a violent situation, he kept walking toward the central room. He took short, choppy steps due to overwhelming panic and a desire not to slip in the puddles.

  Only an inch or two away from his path, he saw that the display case hiding his Page had been shattered, with the treasure he sought still safe in its spot. He swiped it without stopping.

  Most of the survivors had gathered in the middle of the room. Some had armed themselves with the metal folding chairs they had been sitting in. Of those armed, only 20% or so looked calm enough to have thought of this on their own. They were clearly horrified, but strong enough to take initiative and fight.

  The others were weeping and babbling incoherently, barely able to hold their weapons. They all stood in a circle. Behind them, the field trip and their parent chaperones cowered on the tile floor. Isaac could see ten children that were shaken, but not obviously hurt. The brain gang wouldn’t allow him enough focus to take a headcount, but it seemed there were fewer chaperones than he had seen earlier.

  Isaac stared at the crowd, running through a series of emotions, none of them pleasant. But he still didn’t see who or what had done all of this.

  Isaac took a deep breath, scrambling to say something heroic to reassure the people below.

  “Everyone try to stay calm!” He called out boldly (“Calm, please, everyone, stay!” He cried out in a mousy squeak).

  Everyone turned their heads to Isaac. He asked them who or what did this and where did they go, puffing his chest out and standing tall in a show of courage. (“Where’d it go?” He screeched in a voice just barely within the range of human hearing as he kneeled behind the railing.)

  Several of the museum militia pointed their chairs at a hallway to their right. Isaac took a few careful steps down to find the killer. Several people screamed for him to stop, and he saw why. The murderer was coming back.

  What Isaac saw blew the hollows out of the water. It blew the hollows back into the water just to blow them out again. It repeated this process a few times just to get its point across. Hollow he could take, to some extent. They looked human. He had played Resident Evil. Regardless of any nomenclature confusion, they were something Isaac could wrap his mind around. This was different.

  What entered the room looked like someone had started building a cat, then tried to change it to an insect, or perhaps a reptile, and then dumped it in any mythology’s underworld where the worst things imaginable hang out. It walked on all fours with a grace and confidence earned through generations of honed hunter instincts. Its body was covered in matte black scales where a normal feline would have had fur. Every joint and vertebrae was complimented by a row of bony spikes which led down to a forked tail as if to say, “In case you didn’t already get the point.” The beast looked directly up at Isaac.

  He noted quite unhappily that the creature lacked eyes. It had eye sockets, but they were simply smooth pits of gray flesh on its face. It seemed to be guided by the long thin antennae protruding from its forehead, with little gray orbs at the ends telling its master where to go. They twitched and wiggled, danced and flopped until they both decided that a crowd of frightened prey was bet
ter than just one person.

  The creature moved toward them, hindered by five brave souls who swung and jabbed their chairs at it in much the same way that lion tamers do not. With each swing, the monster retorted with a gurgling, grinding hiss.

  Something out of that Book had to have been helpful, Isaac told his nervous system. They had collected bits and pieces of the foreign phrase. It was on the tip of Isaac’s tongue. How could he forget something that had been burned into his psyche the previous night?

  Isaac recalled the hand gesture that had been drawn with the incantation, with some excitement. He repeated a clumsy approximation of it and managed to get the basics correct; Press each fingertip together to make a sphere, bend each pair of digits inward from the smallest to the thumb.

  Nothing happened, but he was thrilled to make progress. He tried the gesture again.

  The demon-cat-lizard ripped a chair from someone’s hands, giving a repeat performance on the person’s heart. The remaining four clubbed the creature around the head and back with their chairs. It shot the forked end of its tail through one of their throats like a scorpion, blinding the third with a fresh spray of blood.

  “Næ’…” Isaac said in an undertone as he frantically repeated the hand motions. He broke out in cold sweat as more people, some attempting to follow the example of their defenders, took horrendous claw swipes to their chests, limbs, and faces. Children screamed so harshly that Isaac’s ears could only interpret a wailing, modulated tone.

  “Næ’…”

  More screaming. More blood.

  “Næ’chäb… äl’mæ?”

  Isaac began to lose hope. The words weren’t coming to him. People were dying in front of his eyes. He looked at the ancient sheet of paper he had taken from the broken display.

  Was this old Book worth it? Isaac thought to himself. Panic and Rage began to argue whether or not this had indeed been worth it, but Isaac tuned them out. He could feel the page pulling him, as its siblings did. Isaac knew he needed to be here.